


My wife (25f, human) was bitten by a werewolf and I (28f, vampire) can’t deal with all this fur.

by yoshizora



Category: Xenoblade Chronicles 2
Genre: F/F, Urban Fantasy, Vampire/Werewolf AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:00:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27479959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yoshizora/pseuds/yoshizora
Summary: Lycanthropy is just a small inconvenience in everyday life, really.
Relationships: Brighid/Mòrag Ladair
Comments: 4
Kudos: 65





	My wife (25f, human) was bitten by a werewolf and I (28f, vampire) can’t deal with all this fur.

**Author's Note:**

> belated halloween fic that's more like a stupid self-indulgent thing i wanted to do for a long while now 
> 
> moraghid gay ✌️

Mòrag’s left forearm had been wrapped up in bandages from the wrist to the elbow. Her jacket, a tight leather thing that Brighid was particularly fond of, is mostly in tatters. Which is less of an issue than the fact that something had apparently tried to maul her wife, but Brighid still eyes the remains of the jacket with some measure of mourning. Mòrag had worn that leather jacket when they went on holiday to Leftheria last year.

The doctor taps his clipboard. He’d introduced himself as Dromarch earlier (just Dromarch, no title of Doctor, which struck Brighid as just a little suspicious) and had delivered a long spiel about the physiological differences between beastmen and werewolves, which is a _very_ important distinction to make, because you see, he is a beastman and can sympathize with Mòrag’s plight but please be sure to know the difference!

Obviously he’s not a werewolf. He’s got a big bushy mane with tiger stripes and rounded ears on top of his head. Mòrag and Brighid can tell the difference between cats and dogs, thank you very much.

“We’ve done all we could,” he finally says, after a pause to catch his breath.

Brighid makes a face. No one says _we’ve done all we could_ unless they’re going to follow that with some bad news.

“But…?”

“Oh, yes.” He reaches into one of his pockets and offers a bottle of pills, rattling them at Mòrag. “Take two a day for one week. They should help.”

“Will these prevent me from turning?” Mòrag asks, too hesitant to be optimistic.

Dromarch blinks. “Apologies for the misdirection. Those are just painkillers, Mrs. Ladair.”

* * *

It wasn’t Mòrag’s fault, but Brighid wouldn’t be upset with her even if the attack had been the result of carelessness or a lapse in judgment. The story is fairly straightforward: she was on her way back from the blood bank walking her usual route back home, when something grabbed her by the back of her jacket and yanked her into a dim alley between the pharmacy and a bank (a regular bank, not a blood bank). She tried to punch whoever it was. They bit her arm.

Then, her wallet was stolen.

Then, the culprit ran off.

Then, Mòrag walked herself over to the hospital.

That’s about the gist of it. Filing a police report isn’t as much of a headache as Brighid had anticipated, but the officers sound unmotivated and unconcerned and it takes all her self control to not grab the closest cop and slam his head through his desk. Her wife was attacked by a werewolf, for the love of the Architect! In broad moonlight!

But, humans are easy prey. Everyone knows that. Sometimes being careful just isn’t enough.

* * *

“Are you sure you’re alright?” Brighid asks again. “If you need to talk about it…”

“’Tis but a scratch,” Mòrag says, lounging rather dramatically on the couch. Her bandaged arm rests over her stomach; her other arm goes over her forehead. “My, I hadn’t expected to be mugged in this part of the city. I suppose I should be thankful I escaped relatively unscathed. An unexpected stroke of fortune.”

“ _Relatively unscathed._ ”

“If only I had the foresight to carry silver on my person.”

“Mòrag.” Brighid stands over her, blocking the TV. Neither of them had been paying any mind to whatever’s on, but she just wants to get Mòrag’s attention. “You’re going to turn into a werewolf.”

All things considered, she’s really taking this in stride. She could still be in shock. Or maybe Dromarch did an exceptional job explaining what exactly would happen to her and that there is nothing to really make a fuss over, being a werewolf isn’t the worst thing that could happen, as long as she follows the strict diet and health regimen he prescribed then all would be well. It isn’t as though she’d go berserk like a rabid dog.

Or something like that.

Mòrag chews on her lip in thought. Her arm slides down to cover her eyes. “It was very unexpected.”

“I should have been there with you,” Brighid says with great affliction. She kneels beside Mòrag and brushes her arm away from her face. “Why aren’t you angry?”

“Why would I be?” Her brow raises in surprise. “I’ve faced far greater misfortunes, Brighid. Please, don’t beset yourself with concern. I’ll be just fine. It is rather a shame the police were exceptionally useless, however...”

“What about your wallet?”

“… That can be dealt with later.” Mòrag lowers her head back down and closes her eyes. “I’ve already made the appropriate calls; the thief will find no use of my cards.”

Brighid sighs. _Priorities._ She imagines it vividly: Mòrag sitting in that sterile hospital room, speaking steadily on her phone while Dromarch sanitizes and sews up her arm. He tries to say something but Mòrag politely shushes him with a wave. Yes, that’s likely how it went.

* * *

So, Dromarch was more or less right about the painkillers. They go to bed before sunrise and Mòrag spends much of the morning twitching in her sleep and sweating enough that Brighid almost wants to push her to the other side of the bed, but she sees the look on her face and instead holds her close.

Regrettably, Brighid has no body heat to offer for warmth. Mòrag still clings, now caught in a half-conscious daze and muttering nonsense to herself. Her skin is clammy. She’s scratching at her bandages, trying to pick them loose.

It escalates until Brighid is kneeling over her, keeping her wrists pinned against the mattress to stop Mòrag from thrashing or removing her bandages. The digital clock on the nightstand blinks in the dark, sunlight blocked by the shutters and heavy curtains: 9:00. 10:00. 11:00.

Even with the unnatural strength of a vampire, she begins to tire from holding Mòrag still. Brighid offers a silent apology and leans down, sinking her fangs into the muscle between Mòrag’s neck and shoulder.

Her lips seal around the wound and she sucks. Mòrag’s blood tastes like— well, it’d always had a distinct flavor, coppery and warm and sweet, but now there’s something else in the aftertaste. Something _animal_. Brighid’s first instinct is to draw back and spit the blood out, but Mòrag makes a small noise and so she stays in place.

Mòrag eventually stops moving. Her features smooth out and she falls into a deep sleep, arms wrapped tightly around Brighid.

* * *

3:00 in the afternoon.

Brighid wakes up to the sharp pain of claws digging into her back.

“—Mòrag, wake _up._ ”

“Mmh…?” Mòrag, uncharacteristically groggy, blinks. Brighid rolls off of her the moment Mòrag’s grip loosens, that animal taste still coating in the inside of her mouth. The bite mark Brighid had left and the bruising around it are gone.

In fact, that bloody, raw mess that had been her left arm is completely fine as well. Mòrag had apparently tugged off the bandages while they slept and now it’s…

Brighid sits up. She grabs Mòrag’s face, pries her jaw open and pushes her lip up away from her gums.

Fangs. Mòrag has fangs now. Not like Brighid’s, which are meant to delicately pierce flesh and draw blood, but big jagged canines that are almost too large for her mouth.

Now just a little more awake, Mòrag blinks. She runs her tongue over her teeth.

“Ah.”

No, no, this is fine. It’s not a big deal. It’s fine. Brighid sighs and lets go of her face. “You were agitated in your sleep.”

“Was I?”

“Maybe the doctor should have given you stronger painkillers.”

“I feel just fine now. Nothing to worry about.”

“If you say so,” Brighid says, completely unconvinced. “I hope you don’t mind, but I took some of your blood to calm you down.”

Mòrag pushes herself up on one elbow and gingerly touches her neck, the wound gone but the sensation lingering. Her eyes turn to Brighid, questioning.

“You know I never mind. How do I taste? Has the flavor changed at all?”

Relief washes over Brighid, without her even realizing just how bothered she’d been. Mòrag’s blood has something unfamiliar in it and she grew fangs bigger than her own, but she’s still… she’s still Mòrag. Her priorities are all skewed yet somehow make perfect sense and her first thought is the taste of her blood— which is such a Mòrag thing to ask about, when anyone else would run to the mirror and despair over those jagged fangs. Because Brighid likes her blood, and if her blood is no longer palatable, then _that’s_ the worst thing to come out of her newfound lycanthropy.

So she really isn’t changing. In the less literal sense. That’s one worry to cross off the list, at the very least. Brighid grabs her face again, considerably more gentle than when she had been checking her teeth, and kisses her.

“I’d drain you completely dry if it wouldn’t kill you,” she says, lying back down beside Mòrag and stroking her hair. They go back to sleep.

* * *

So, life goes on as normal.

Sort of.

Brighid begins to find more and more dark hair on the couch cushions, and on their bedsheets and pillows, and then she once caught Mòrag aggressively wielding a lint roller with her tail tucked between her legs. Her _tail._ The thing is nearly as long as her arm and maybe, just maybe, Brighid would say it’s cute how it wags whenever Mòrag looks her way, but it’s still a _tail._

She could deal with the fangs and the strange aftertaste of Mòrag’s blood, but the tail is a bit much.

So is the—

“If it would put you at ease, Brighid, I could trim my—“

“Don’t say fur.”

“… Hair.”

Brighid clears her throat to announce that she’s coming up behind Mòrag, as she’s currently occupied with scrutinizing herself in a vanity mirror and can’t see Brighid in the glass. The moment she draws close, Mòrag’s tail begins to wag and smacks Brighid across her thighs. It would be so easy… to just grab it…

No, she must have restraint. Mòrag rubs the edge of her ears between her fingers, frowning. She’d been taking all these changes in dignified stride, but the full moon is tomorrow and she’s antsier than she’d ever been.

Also, she’s all out of painkillers.

“Even if I did, I assume it would all grow back anyway,” she sighs, her tail going still.

Forget about restraint. Brighid grabs her tail and Mòrag startles, instinctively trying to pull away.

“I can’t say I’m particularly happy about all this,” Brighid says. The fur— hair? Fur? Hair, is silky soft on her tail, warm in her grip. Better to not think too hard about it. “Don’t pout, Mòrag. It’s not about the way you look— only you could pull off that wolfish appearance and still be dashing. That has nothing to do with it.”

“Then, what?”

“You shed too much.”

“I did offer to trim my fur—“

“ _Hair._ ”

“Hair.”

At last, Mòrag frees her tail from Brighid’s grasp. Try as she might, however, it won’t stop swishing back and forth. Come to think of it, maybe it’s wagging more out of nervousness than excitement. Brighid reaches around her to grab a hairbrush and gently presses down on Mòrag’s shoulder to keep her seated. This is normal. She’s just brushing her hair, like she always does every evening when they wake up. Normal things.

Mòrag’s ears twitch.

“Brighid,” she starts, hesitant. “Perhaps you should restrain me— more for your safety than mine, you must understand.”

Brighid lightly taps the back of the brush against her head. _Thonk._ “You’re not going to go _feral_ , or however you want to put it. Dromarch said you’ll be perfectly fine, remember?”

“He also gave me OTC painkillers,” she dryly says.

* * *

All things considered, the full moon is very anticlimactic.

Brighid steps out to grab snacks from the butcher’s on the corner of the block— just some raw cuts of beef, which she figures Mòrag will appreciate— and returns to the penthouse to find a large, dark, hulking shape delicately trying to use a lint roller on the couch.

The couch had been flipped over, but that’s not the most pressing issue at the moment.

“Here, let me get that for you,” Brighid says, already beside her. Mòrag used to be startled by the eerie silence of a vampire emerging by her shoulder a long time ago, and Brighid would tease her for that. Then Mòrag became accustomed to her vampiric quirks, and now there’s absolutely no way Brighid could sneak up on her with those new ears of hers. It’s rather a shame, but it also means anyone who tries to steal Mòrag’s wallet again would be ripped to shreds before they could even realize it’s not a human they targeted.

Mòrag tries to say something, but all that comes out is a sort of husky sound between a growl and a whine. She sheepishly hands over the lint roller and steps aside, hunched over so that she doesn’t tower above Brighid.

Brighid eyes the tattered remains of Mòrag’s shirt hanging pathetically over her broad shoulders. Oh, no, that was one of her favorites.

“Did the painkillers work?” She asks, righting the couch and sweeping over the patches of fur sticking to the cushions. Mòrag was probably sitting down when she transformed. “Remember, Mòrag. I can tell when you’re lying to save face.”

Mòrag huffs through her nose.

“I’ll take that as a yes. Oh, by the way, I bought some food for you. Try not to make a mess when you eat.”

Mòrag huffs again, trying to pick through the paper bag without tearing it apart with her claws.

The lint roller isn’t doing much. She’s going to have to go find the vacuum.

* * *

Three days later, they pass by Mòrag’s assailant on the street.

Mòrag pulls at Brighid’s hand, bringing them to a halt in the middle of the sidewalk. A few pedestrians swerve around them with grumbles, but neither of them pay them any mind; Mòrag lifts her nose to the air, sniffing, and turns around to point at a retreating figure going the opposite way. Only their back is visible, but they’re… smaller than Brighid would have expected of someone who was able to land a hit (bite) on Mòrag. It’s a girl. A girl wearing a heavy coat with a fur-lined hood and dark leggings.

“Ah! The culprit—”

Before Brighid can even react, Mòrag is running after the girl— she’d broken out into a sprint already, jumping over a parked car and darting in and out of meandering traffic.

Mòrag easily catches up and bodyslams into her, crashing them both into the side of a pickup truck. Irate car horns reverberate through the brisk nighttime air. Mòrag’s breath is fogging in front of her face as she wrestles, half-rolling and half-dragging the small-ish person to the sidewalk, expertly avoiding snapping teeth.

“Let go of me _you asshole_ —“

Brighid grabs the girl’s neck with one icy cold hand, and a warning hiss.

“… Aw, shit.”

They both look down at the face of a young woman, bright blue eyes widened and dark hair askew, some of it stuck to her lips. Now pinned by both of them, she no longer struggles. Mòrag presses down on her with one knee digging into her stomach. Passerby are giving them a wide berth, no one even bothering to rubberneck. That’s one perk of living in the city, Brighid supposes.

“My wallet. Hand it over.”

“ _Huh?_ ”

Brighid resists the urge to slap her forehead. “Mòrag, don’t you think there’s something else you should say first?”

Mòrag’s brow raises. “What, that she bit me?”

“Well. Yes.”

“That’s hardly a concern. The bite healed completely days ago. It didn’t even leave a scar.”

“She infected you with _lycanthropy!_ ”

“Brighid.” Mòrag stares at her, completely serious, and Brighid finds herself faltering. Damn that gaze. Not even being a vampire makes her immune to Mòrag’s gazes. “I want my wallet back.”

The woman nervously laughs, a high-pitched sound. “That crappy old thing? I already took all the cash and tossed the rest of it!”

“Hm. I see. Then what do you propose we ought to do with you?” Mòrag’s lips pull back, baring her fangs.

“… Uhh, don’t eat me?”

“ _Eat_ you?” Mòrag roughly hoists her up to her feet. Brighid hovers nearby, ready at a split second’s notice, but that’s probably unnecessary. When Mòrag isn’t being ridiculous, she’s frighteningly competent. “Certainly not. I’m taking you directly to the police station. You'll be dealt with appropriately there.”

“Oh _fuck you._ ”

* * *

And again, life goes on. Dromarch stops “prescribing” painkillers for Mòrag and compliments her on her healthy and luxurious fur, which annoys Brighid more than it should, and Mòrag makes no changes to the nocturnal routine she had adopted years ago for Brighid. That animal aftertaste of her blood is no longer so unpleasant. Brighid fits her with a new wardrobe for the full moons. They adapt, they manage, and Mòrag’s lycanthropy stops being such an unfamiliar inconvenience.

Except for all the excessive shedding, but they'll both learn to live with it.


End file.
